The present disclosure relates generally to web services, and, more specifically, to web service atomic transaction (WS-AT) systems.
Web Service Atomic Transaction (WS-AT) is a technology standard widely adopted by the industry. WS-AT is a web service standard created by the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS), and the standard provides a specific coordination type that defines protocols for atomic transactions that are ACID (Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, Durability) compliant. Further, WS-AT includes a two-phase commit transaction protocol and is suitable for short-duration transactions, as well as an interoperability protocol that introduces no new programming interfaces for transaction support.
In a large-scale environment, it is presently recognized that WS-AT systems can suffer from deadlock. For example, because there may be numerous service providers present in a large-scale WS-AT system, each generally operating independently of one another, deadlock can result when two or more service providers unknowingly attempt to access the same resource at the same time (e.g., modify the same database entry) when attempting to satisfy client requests. Such deadlock can result in delays and connection time-outs as client requests remain unsatisfied, as well as additional network traffic and demand on processing resources as clients resubmit requests. As such, it is generally desirable to avoid or prevent deadlock, especially in large-scale environments that include numerous service providers.